In Control
by Mrs. Crocodile
Summary: Nathan knew that something inside of him did not belong, but he could never figure out what it was until the dreams started.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** If I owned Heroes, this is what would happen. But I don't, so it won't. (And don't sue me.)

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**In Control**

Summary: Nathan knew that something inside of him did not belong, but he could never figure out what it was until the dreams started.

Spoilers for all of Volume 4

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Nathan Petrelli could feel that something was wrong. Something was always wrong. There was something inside of him that did not fit.

This kind of matched up with the descriptions of depression that he had read, this feeling like he did not belong in his own skin. He thought about how he had stood before his constituents and told them that his brother, Peter had attempted suicide, when he knew that was not true. He did it for himself, to bolster his political career, barely even thinking about Peter's feelings. How ironic would it be if he, Nathan, turned out to be the one suffering from depression?

It did not feel like he was depressed though. He did not believe that this was depression. There was answer to what this was, something other than mental illness, and Nathan felt that he should know what it was, but he just could not put his finger on it.

On the surface, everything in his life was going really well. With the whole Building 26 mistake behind him, he was able to focus on being a senator, on doing the job he had been appointed to do. He had reached out to his family and was able to take the time to just be a father to his two sons. During the last few months, he and Heidi had finally talked about the circumstances that led to their separation, and they realized that they still cared about each other. They were still officially separated, but the divorce had been put on hold indefinitely.

So Nathan had no reason to complain about his life, nothing that he could pinpoint as the reason he felt this way. But something was wrong, and he could not figure out what it was.

–

In his dream that night, Sylar found Elle waiting for him in the Canfield house. The house looked different. The floor had been repaired and the living room decorated. There was a beachy feel to the room now. The walls were painted a color he thought of as ocean blue, and the bedspread (A bed in the living room?) had shells on it. However, despite the changes it was definitely, recognizably, the Canfield house.

Elle was lounging on the bed, kicking her legs a little, wearing his button-up shirt and boxers. She looked happy to see him walk in, as though she had been waiting for him for a very long time.

Sylar could feel that something was still wrong, and it was not the room or Elle being there in the clothes he killed her in. Something about him was wrong. He felt that he was getting closer to it, but he was still so far away. He looked at his hands and down at his body. He had on a bloody white shirt, but that was not it either. It was not anything about the dream; it was still something on the inside.

Elle got up from the bed. "You're here!" She took his arm and pulled him over to the bed. "Do you like what I've done with the place?"

"Yeah, sure," he said, even though he actually did not like it at all.

Elle pushed him back onto the bed. "So I guess things are going really well for you. I heard you got back together with your ex-wife."

Sylar tried to sit up. "Well, sort of. I mean we're working at it. There's a lot of..." He stopped because he did not think that Elle wanted to hear about this.

She climbed on top of him. "Do you love her?"

"Yes," he said truthfully. "I lost sight of it for a while, but I've always loved Heidi."

Elle cocked her head to the side. "That's so sad." She brought her head down to kiss him. "Because you're going to cheat on her again."

Sylar did not worry about that because he knew that this did not count as cheating. For one thing... And then that first reason was gone, whatever it was. But the other thing, the most important part, was that this was a dream, and it was not like he could control his dreams.

Elle lifted her head. "I think you can control your dreams, Gabriel. I think you're in complete control right now."

–

Nathan woke up, disappointed. He felt that there was something else she was going to tell him, something important that he needed to hear. He closed his eyes and tried to get the dream back, to get her back, but it did not work. If anything, the dream got further away, and after a minute, he could not even remember how he knew that young, blond girl. She was Elle Bishop, Bob's daughter. She worked at the Company, but they had never met. Had they?

He put his hand to his head. He felt like he was losing his mind. What had that dream even been about? It was something important, and yet, it was just gone. His alarm went off, startling him. He had to get ready and go to work. He did not have time to worry about what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

–

The next night, the scene was exactly the same. Same house, same walls, same bedspread. Elle was waiting in the same way, like she had been there the whole time. "I see you're back in control," she said.

Sylar did not know what that meant. He walked cautiously over to her and sat next to Elle on the bed. "Well, I am all about control."

Elle smiled, as if at a memory. "Yeah, maybe you are. I seen you both in and out of control, in a lot of different ways, and I have to say that I liked you better when you were in control, especially of the hunger. Which I guess you are now." She laughed wryly. "But my opinion doesn't matter anymore. You're looking for a different kind of control, and that's why you have to fix this, Gabriel."

Sylar remembered again that Elle had the answer to what was wrong with him. He wished she would be more specific. "Fix what?"

She shook her head. "I can't tell you that." After a beat, she added, "But you'll figure it out. I have faith in you."

Sylar wanted to ask her for a hint, but he knew that she would not go for that. He thought maybe it would be more fruitful to trick her into telling him something. It was difficult to figure out how to do that when he had no idea what was even wrong. He tried to piece it together from what she had already said. This had something to do with control, with him not having control. He was in control of the hunger right now. None of this meant anything to him.

Elle watched him as he tried to think this through. "Why can't you think of anything to say to me? Over the six months, isn't there anything you've wished you could say to me?"

That was a good question, but Sylar realized that there was not anything he particularly needed to say. "I haven't really thought about you much since you died."

"You mean since I was murdered. How can that be true?" She did not sound angry or hurt. She seemed genuinely curious about how it was that he had not thought about her.

Sylar was a little curious about that as well. He found it really difficult to believe that she had only been dead for six months. It seemed like much longer. The grieving process had happened, and now it was over. He tried to remember a time when he thought about her more regularly. He remembered setting her body on fire on the beach. He had done it out of respect. He could not just leave her there to decompose or be picked apart by vultures. He needed to dispose of her body himself. So he burned her. He remembered that, standing there, saying goodbye to her, but that was all he could remember. It was as though his mind had put up a firm mental block and was telling him that he did not want to go any further down that road. "Maybe it was too painful to remember."

Elle laughed deeply, like she thought that was just so cute. "That's not the reason. I like it, but no. There's a reason you don't think about me, Gabriel. Once you figure out what that is, maybe you'll know what's wrong."

Sylar was getting frustrated. She knew what he wanted to know. She could just tell him instead of playing these games. He wondered if there was a way to make her tell him. He look at her head. She was already dead; threats were probably useless.

Elle was still smiling. She seemed to be having much more fun with this than he was. "Threats are definitely useless. And not just because I'm dead, but because this is a dream. I'm not even real," she said with laughter in her voice.

Sylar sighed. "So now what? If you aren't going to tell me, where do we go from here?"

"Mmm." Elle stretched and arched her back. "We could go back to cheating on your wife."

Sylar did not think that was the worst idea in the world, but he felt the need to point something out. "It's not cheating; you're not even real."

That sobered Elle up. She stared at him with those mesmerizing eyes. Sylar reached out to touch her face, but she batted away his hand. "It's not cheating because you're not--"

–

Nathan sat up, feeling much the same as he had when he woke up that morning. It was the same kind of confusion, the same feeling like something important was on the tip of his mind. Something about control. Getting control, being in control, being out of control. Control of what?

Nathan looked at the clock as he lay back in bed. It was still too early to be awake. He had an important day ahead of him, and he needed to be well rested. Dreams come and go. It might be frustrating not to remember, but he was sure that this one was no more important than any other. Nathan fell back to sleep and had unremarkable, unmemorable dreams.

–

The third night, Sylar was not surprised by what he saw. He was expecting to have this dream again. He could not remember anything specific about the last two nights, could not remember any hints she might have given him, but he remembered Elle.

He walked toward her, wracking his brain to come up with something that might be significant. "So I'm in this shirt." He pulled at his collar. "With the blood, but you're not shot, which happened first."

Elle was sitting cross legged on the bed. She put her hand over the thigh where she had been shot. "Do you want me to be shot? I can be shot." She winced, and blood started to trickle through her fingers.

That was not what he meant. "No, I don't want that." Immediately, the blood was gone.

Elle smiled, pulling her hand away from smooth, unmarred skin. "See, you can have anything you want, Gabriel, as long as you stay in control."

It came back to him now, her obsession with control. "Of what?"

"Of your mind," she answered simply.

Sylar felt like that was more of an answer than she usually gave, but it still did not mean anything. He looked around. "And I can have anything I want." He saw the counter where she popped his shoulder back into the socket and watched that whole conversation play out in his mind. "I can take what I want."

Elle lay back on the bed. "Go for it."

Sylar had not really mean it like that, but there she was, wearing his clothes, looking beautiful. There was no reason for him not to be able to hold her again, if just in a dream. He pushed up the shirt and ran his hand over her bare stomach.

"What I don't understand," she said, "is if I was what you wanted, then... what happened?" She sat up suddenly, pushing him away. "What did I do wrong? I mean, I gave you everything. I forgave _everything_. What could I have done to make you love me?"

Sylar sighed. He supposed it was a good question. "It's not you, Elle. I'm just not capable of loving anyone."

This made her a little angry. "You love Heidi."

"_Nathan_ loves..." It sunk in. This was what she had been trying to tell him. "Nathan loves Heidi," he repeated. "And I'm not Nathan.

She gave him a sad smile. "I think it's time for you to wake up."

–

Nathan woke up feeling strongly that something was wrong. That same feeling he had for months was intensifying to the point where he just wanted to rip off his own skin. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom to splash water on his face.

In the bathroom, he looked at his reflection. Something in his mind told him that he knew of a way to rip off his skin. He concentrated on his reflection, on being in control, on fixing himself. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, Sylar was staring back at him from the mirror.

Sylar felt his face, _his_ face. His hands, his arms, his chest. For the first time in four months, he was Sylar. And he never would have realized it without Elle. He wandered back to his bed, Nathan's bed. He reveled in being able to make that distinction. He lay his head against the pillow. He wanted to go back; he wanted to thank her.

–

Elle seemed really surprised to see him. She got up from the bed, where she was still sitting. "Wow, twice in one night. I'm a lucky girl." She walked up to him with her head tilted. "I think we're done here, though."

Whatever else he wanted to say flew out of his head. "I've been Nathan for four months. That's why I haven't thought about you. I couldn't remember you."

She raised her eyebrows. "But how much did you really think about me during those other two months?"

Probably not as much as he should have, and he felt that Elle knew that, but he still lied. "I thought about you all the time."

"Really?" She sounded very doubtful. "All the time? Even when you were hitting on Claire? Perfect, indestructible Claire."

He did not think that he should have to feel guilty about that. She was dead; why would it matter to her? Why would anything that happened after her death matter to her? "I just wanted to thank you. After everything I did to you, you still came to help me."

"Whoa." She held up her hand. "This is just a dream. I'm not some kind of angel."

He knew all of that, but he felt that there was some essence of her there. It was not just his mind doing this. There was a remnant of Elle that was a part of him. "Yeah, you are. An angel with a broken watch."

She shook her head, like she did not want to hear that. "You realized a long time ago that that's not true." She created a large ball of electricity with both hands, something Sylar had yet to master. "And all of your victims are part of you, for as long as you have their ability. I'm no different."

She was different. Just the way he had gotten her ability made her different. He put his hands on her arms and pulled her close.

Elle shook her head, refusing to look at him. "This, remembering, it's not going to bring me back. You need to let me go, Gabriel. You should just wake up now."

–

Sylar opened his eyes. The clock by the bed told him that his alarm would be going off in about ten minutes. He needed to think about what he was going to do with this new development. He had only vague memories of Parkman trying to erase Sylar, and Gabriel, from his mind. It was better to go on as Nathan for now, until he knew how he wanted to handle the people who had done this to him.

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**Author's Note:** There could be more. I have this whole idea about Sylar trying to find a way to bring Elle back. I might even have some thoughts about how he would deal with the others. But I'm busy, I have another story going, and the new volume is starting soon. Most of all, I think I need to let Elle go too. So I don't know if this is going to continue or not. I'm leaning toward no.


	2. Continued

**Author's Note:** I told myself yesterday that if I could get this written before the new Volume started, I would post it. So here it is. This is a continuation, but it is not a promise of any commitment to the story. I know that I always say that. (Look at the Author's Notes in the first few chapters of Death Becomes Her.) And I always mean it. Until I've seen some of Vol. 5, I'll have no idea what I want to do. So, new chapter, but no promises.

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**Continued...  
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Sylar sat back in his office chair, swinging back of forth. Somehow, he had never noticed before how boring it was being senator. There was a study on his desk. He was supposed to read it. His support would be very useful to the people on the other side of the aisle. The party leader just wanted him to think about it. Blah, blah, blah.

What he really wanted to do was talk to Peter. He knew that his moth—Angela and Parkman were involved, but he was not sure about Peter. Nathan's noble little brother was working as a paramedic in New York City, so a meeting had to be scheduled. He had to plan for an afternoon to take off just to see his brother. He shook his head. Peter was not his brother.

This had only all come back to him a few hours before. While it was easy for him to look at the picture of Heidi and the kids that was on his desk and know that was not his family, and it manageable for him to stop thinking of Angela as his mother, he had a lot of trouble with Peter. Pete. He still felt like a brother, which was odd because Sylar was an only child. How would he know what it felt like to have a brother?

It was Thursday now; they were having lunch on Saturday. He knew that if he could just see Peter, he could figure out whether he knew. Then Sylar could decide what to do with this fraternal bond.

The entire day, he did not see anyone who mattered. That was what he wanted to tell them, all the aides and secretaries and majority whips; he wanted to tell them that they were insignificant to him. Instead, he smiled and kept pretending to be Nathan.

Finally, he was able to go home. Nathan's home, but he did not mind thinking of it as his as well. Luckily, Heidi was also still living in New York, so he would not have to deal with her until Saturday. He was not sure what to do about Heidi, about this whole fact that he had a wife, at least as long as he pretended to be Nathan. Dream Elle had been right about one thing. Actually, she had been right about everything, but one thing in particular. Remembering her would not bring her back. For that reason, he was leaning toward the option of keeping Heidi around for a while longer.

That night, he made a conscious choice not to dream about Elle. He agreed that he needed to let her go. He had already let her go, six months before. He would just have to do it again.

–

Sylar got to New York early on Saturday morning. Monty had a soccer game, which, like being a senator, Sylar had enjoyed more when he thought he was Nathan. What kind of a name was Monty anyway? Sylar knew the answer; he could remember choosing the name. He still had all of Nathan's memories, which was probably the source his continued identity confusion.

When Monty scored a goal, he stood and cheered and hugged Heidi. It was not entirely forced either. He actually did feel a burst of pride, even though he was very clear on the fact that he was not anybody's father.

When the game was over, the team went out for pizza, and Sylar promised Monty and Simon that he would spend the rest of the day with them, just after he saw Uncle Peter. After the bomb, when he was healing from radiation poisoning, Nathan had neglected his sons a little. He had neglected his marriage too, but Sylar did not care about that so much anymore. As for the boys, however, he did feel bad for them. It was not out of Nathan's guilt, but as someone who had been abandoned by not one, but two fathers. So while those boys were not his responsibility, Sylar felt that he wanted them to have time with their father, who for all intents and purposes, was him.

The second that Peter walked into the restaurant, Sylar realized just how much he did not want Peter to be involved. He remembered that Peter was the one who drugged him in that limousine. That was the last real memory he had as Sylar. Everything else was very vague, Parkman pushing into his mind, Angela's voice saying it was the only way. Nothing about Peter, but he was there in some capacity, involved somehow.

He stood to hug his brother and clap him on the back. The Petrellis were a very touchy family. "Good to see you, Pete." If Peter knew that he was not really Nathan, that should be easy to find out now that Sylar was in control of his abilities again. All he really needed was the lie detector.

As the meal went on, it did turn out to be a little more tricky than Sylar thought. Obviously, he knew that Peter was not going to come right out and say "I believed you're Nathan," but Sylar thought there would be something. It would be easier on him if Peter was lying. Then it would go off in Sylar's head, and he would know. But with Peter telling the truth, Sylar had to keep wondering if what Peter was saying would be a lie if he knew the truth.

Finally, right after the check came, Sylar needed to force the issue. He needed to bring up a subject that would be clear cut. "Do you ever think about Sylar anymore? I mean after everything, didn't his death seem too easy?"

Peter shook his head. "Easy? I know you weren't there for most of it, but there was nothing easy about Sylar."

Well, if Peter knew, then it would be a lie to say that the man in front of him was not there for most of it. Sylar leaned forward and said in a low voice, "But he could heal, like you and Claire..."

Peter took a drink from his water glass. "There are some things even Claire can't come back from. I saw the body, Nathan. Noah made sure it was taken care of. Sylar's gone for good, and I don't want to have to think about him ever again."

Sylar sat back and nodded. "Okay." Peter didn't know.

–

Heidi and the boys were living at the family home in Hyde Park again. Since it was his family's home, Nathan stayed there when he was in New York. At first, he and Heidi stayed in separate rooms, but recently, they had begun sharing the marital bed again. It seemed deceitful to have sex with her, knowing that he was not really her husband, but that did not stop him. For Sylar, it was far more awkward having sex as Nathan than anything else.

That night, lying next to Heidi, after two nights of no dreams, Sylar went back to the Canfield house. Elle was taping up a box. She noticed him and put the box on her hip. "Do you see this, Gabriel? Do you see the charade you are forcing me to perpetuate?" She handed the box off to him.

Sylar set it down behind him because he did not know what else to do with it. "What charade?"

"I'm 'moving,'" she said, putting air quotes around the word. "I'm packing up things that only exist in your mind because you want to believe that I've just been here this entire time. That I'm in some limbo instead of dead."

"I didn't choose to come here." He was trying to let her go.

Another box appeared out of thin air, and Elle carried it into the kitchen. "Of course, you did. It's a dream." She opened one of the cabinets. "Oh, dishes? Really? I don't eat."

Elle abandoned her packing and walked back over to him. "So do you still think about me all the time? Even when you're having sex with Nathan's wife?"

She actually had not crossed his mind at all during that. "You don't get to have it both ways, Elle. If you're dead and I shouldn't even be here, then you don't get to be angry that I had sex with another woman."

Elle shook her head, amused. "I'm not. Although, isn't it a crime to have sex with a woman while impersonating her husband?"

At first, Sylar thought that they could not possibly make it a crime for a man to lie to woman to get her to have sex. And then he remembered learning about that in law school. He was right, but there was an exception, just for wives, to that general rule about using deceit. Something about the public policy interest in protecting the sanctity of marriage. Sylar never went to law school.

"But Nathan did," Elle said. "No, I don't care about Heidi. I just don't like that you went after Claire. If anyone deserved to be your first first lady, it was me." She thought about that for a second. "And then maybe Heidi, but Claire is low on that list." She took another long pause. She seemed to be getting upset now. "I don't like that you'll never kill her. If it had been her on the beach... If you changed your mind while killing Claire... I don't like her for you."

Sylar did not think that he had ever actually changed his mind about killing Elle. He certainly had not done so that night. He had made very definite decision to cut her out of his life.

She stood about a foot away from him, deliberately not coming any closer. "But now you're here. You're changing your mind now, and it is far too late for that."

Sylar had accepted that. He understood that this was a dream, but he still felt that it was all Elle's fault that his mind was changing. He wanted to move on, with Heidi, Claire, whoever. She was not letting him. He wanted to leave her and go back to living his life without Elle, but that was not what came out of his mouth. "You said I could have anything I wanted as long as I was in control. I'm in control."

She laughed. "I meant that in the dream you could have anything as long as you were in control of your mind." She gestured out around herself. "So here's the dream. But in real life, I was cremated. What are you going to do, open a vein over my ashes?"

He had not thought it out that far. The idea of actually trying to bring her back had only just invaded his mind. "Would that work?"

Elle rolled her eyes and went back to packing up the kitchen. "No."

How would she know? "You know, I was a prosecutor, and I've seen people who were burned. A regular fire can't cremate a body."

She wrapped up a plate in a piece of newspaper. "That's true. I was taken to the morgue, autopsied, left unclaimed. And then they cremated me as a Jane Doe. I'm still there, in some storage room."

Sylar did not know any of that. It was not a mental block; he had never bothered to find out what happened to her. Now, maybe this was just his best guess about what would have happened to her, knowing what Nathan did about unclaimed bodies. Or maybe she was more than just a manifestation of his subconscious. Maybe there really was a part of her there. He was shaken out of these thoughts by the sound of something breaking.

Elle had dropped a plate. "Here we go with that again. Does it help you to have false hope? Because I would think the false part would give away the ending. Or how 'bout this, I'll give away the ending right now." She snapped her fingers.

Sylar woke up immediately, sitting straight up in bed, which woke Heidi too. He smiled apologetically and told her it was a bad dream. He settled back into the bed to think about what he had learned from that dream, if anything. The point was supposed to be that Elle was gone, but that was not what he got from it at all. He knew that he was going to find her ashes and try to raise her from the very dead. He did not particularly want to in that moment; he just knew that he would do it.

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**Author's Note:** And I swear that I'm not obsessed with rape. (This would be another of those cross-story patterns.) I just needed somethng legal for him to think about.


End file.
